Down Under

Common card · No. 300397

Down Under is a colloquialism differently construed to refer to Australia and New Zealand, or the Pacific island countries of Oceania collectively. The term originally referred solely to Australia and gradually expanded in scope. It comes from the fact that Australia is in the Southern Hemisphere, therefore located "down" and "under" almost all other countries on the usual arrangement of a map or globe which places cardinal north at the top. "Down Under" represents Australia's distance and isolation from the rest of the world. During Apollo 11 in 1969, the signal from the moon was received at NASA's Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station near Canberra, so television in Australia broadcast the video slightly before the rest of the world. A television executive boasted that "Just for once we were not at the end of the line, our accustomed place 'down under'". The term has been in use since the late 19th century, and the persistence of the media use of the term has led to its wide acceptance and...

Read on Wikipedia · Image Public domain